Thealogical Lady: A Blog

Who is an icon of you?

6/2/2016

In my prayers today, I came across Psalm 15, which asks an important question:

Psalm 15

Thea, who is an icon of you?
   Who reveals your holy Body?

Each of us—whether blameless or guilty,
   whether she speaks the truth from her heart or deceives;

Whether there is guile upon her tongue;
whether she offers evil or kindness to her friend;
   whether she heaps generosity or contempt upon her neighbor;

Whether she has sworn to do no wrong
   or makes a vow and then takes back her word.

We are, each of us, icons of you,
because we are your living Body, broken, holy, and ever healing.

What a marvel, that you should knit us together in your love,
   sustaining us for love’s sake alone.

Blessed be Thea, our author and our sacred self,
   now and forever. Amen, amen.

0 Comments

31

1/31/2015

0 Comments

Thea,
you write dreams
as holy icons,
sacred meeting
between me and you.
Wander through the valleys
of my dreamscape this night
and I will meet you face to
veiled face.
Amen.

0 Comments

Praying with Icons: Miriam

1/5/2014

2 Comments

Photo by M. Kate Allen

While on retreat with St. Augustine's Church this weekend, adults were invited to pray with an icon. One of the mothers there had just commented that my daughter, Miriam, certainly qualified as an icon. So I prayed with Miriam, allowing God to behold me through her. I gave voice to my encounter in this way:

We are Godparents.
We are God's parents.
God is our child.

On the seventh day she rested because she was exhausted. She needed rest.

God needs the safety of our arms. God needs our vigilant care and protection.

God would die without us.
God grows up in our midst.

We have a critical role to play in God's destiny.

God is a child and we are her parents. Without our constant attention, she suffers.
We are her caregiver. She needs us to survive.

We are the parents of God, and she loves us implicitly.
May we never betray her love.
Our excuses not to care for her will burst like old wineskins.

She trusts that we will give her all she needs. She trusts that we will be there when she awakes. She trusts that if we put her in the arms of another, that that other will care for her just as well.

We are God's parents and we would die for her.

Her radiant smile stops time in an eternal, brilliant moment.

We feed her with good things.

We love God, for she is our own daughter, wonderfully made in our image.
Her voice causes us to laugh, dance, and run.
Her smile melts our chill anger.
Her cries alert us.

We listen when she calls.

Listen, o mother, give ear to My words.

2 Comments

Advent 2, Monday

12/9/2013

0 Comments

Photo by M. Kate Allen

This past Saturday, my family hosted an Advent housewarming, and I found the wreath and berries you see to the left from Trader Joe's. A tiny wreath and a few tea candles make the passage of Advent time more pronounced, and the faint scent of pine reminds me of home.

When I was growing up in northeast Ohio, I was surrounded by evergreens. On Earth Day each year it was customary to receive an evergreen sapling from school to plant at home, and my family planted them. One of the most beautiful places in Ohio to see evergreens is Quail Hollow State Park in Hartville; another is the Jesuit Retreat House in Parma. Evergreens like those don't grow in the desert. Instead, the thriving flora of the Sonoran desert include Mediterranean olive trees, which would have been familiar to the eyes and hands and mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.

I miss my childhood home enough to buy an evergreen wreath that isn't native to where I live. Maybe next year I'll fashion my own wreath with olive branches and olives. Olive branches have always been a sign of goodwill, and olive oil is a sign of majesty, healing, and nourishment. Appropriate for the season that awaits the arrival of the majestic, healing nourisher, yes?

0 Comments

Thealogical: erring on the side of the feminine

11/11/2013

2 Comments

A few weeks ago, a woman who had visited my Facebook page sent me a private note saying that she couldn't conscientiously support my page (where I advertise myself as a writer and editor, among other things) since I had misspelled a word within my Facebook username. The offending word? "Thealogical."

I wrote back to her: "'Thealogical' is an intentional spelling, not an error. 'Thea' is the Greek word for 'goddess,' and as a feminist, I choose to regard God as 'Thea' rather than 'Theo.'"

And yes, though I studied theology, I now consider myself a thealogian. Though it looks like a misspelling, anyone who knows me knows, firstly, that I'm an outstanding speller; secondly, that I am a student of ancient Greek; and thirdly, that I am in favor of subverting patriarchal assumptions. "Theological" may be the normative spelling, but it does not represent my "normal." "Thealogy" may not be considered a proper subject of study, but it is precisely the study I engage in daily. I am a thealogian. For me, that means not that I reject male images of God, but that I embrace male and female images of God. In my prayer, I am more comfortable addressing God as Goddess, as Mother, as Daughter, as Womb, as She and Her and Hers. As I look at my two children I see living icons of a young Goddess. The Christ child, in my experience, isn't a son--she is a brilliant daughter. The Christ engaged in ministry is not a thirty-something man, in my experience, but a woman--a woman who looks surprisingly like the person in my mirror, a woman who has known the pains of childbirth and the joys of motherhood and the pleasures and comforts and struggles of an unwaveringly committed relationship.

It amazes me to look back on my Roman Catholic upbringing and see how contrary my thealogical views are to Roman Catholic teaching. In the past, I've hidden or downplayed my feminist and inclusive inclinations, lest someone in power (or with connections to power) discover me and blow the whistle on my waywardness.

I am grateful to be moving into a Catholic tradition in which my thealogy can be treated with seriousness rather than mere suspicion. Perhaps this seriousness is possible because the Anglo-Catholic tradition was made a people's tradition by a woman--Queen Elizabeth, specifically. Perhaps it's possible because the current presiding Anglo-Catholic bishop of the United States is a woman--Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori. Perhaps it's possible simply because I'm a woman who has chosen, at long last, to speak up rather than maintain the theological status quo with her fearful silence.

In any case, I am a thealogian. Take my spelling as a misspelling if you wish, but please don't mistake it as an unintentional one.

2 Comments

Who is an icon of you?

31

Praying with Icons: Miriam

Advent 2, Monday

Thealogical: erring on the side of the feminine

Archives

Categories